


the steeple of (our) dreams

by mismatched (miscalculated)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Codependency, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Rough Sex, Switching, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, all graphic sex scenes are them as adults, non-graphic descriptions of them having intercourse as teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:34:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miscalculated/pseuds/mismatched
Summary: The worst part is that the entirety of their relationship is memorialized on film and sheets of music.*You can’t live without me means I can’t live without you.
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Lee Jihoon | Woozi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 71





	the steeple of (our) dreams

**Author's Note:**

> howdy,
> 
> decided to write something that a wittle bit too close to home. was born because i was being a Sad Boy^TM and reminiscing and feeling a tad nostalgic. please look at the tags! and remember - do not shape your moral values around work of fiction. this is not meant to be the barometer of morality, nor have i ever tried to do so. read with caution. 
> 
> [Playlist of all songs mentioned, and some I listened to while writing!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6HRdwAdJj8lhq1KwdpBB9g?si=4a0hd7HoTYGvKrpREmK67g) Only the duet is not on here, but that's because Spotify doesn't have it. Search the name on Youtube if you're curious about what it sounds like. 
> 
> thanks for reading [heart emoji]

Even the first time they’d ever met there were cameras to capture it. Jihoon couldn’t have been taller than five foot three, cherubic face and awkward smile albeit he’d been performing at piano recitals since he was old enough to grasp the concept of an instrument. But this time he stood tall with the big kids, the older teenagers that were more skilled and brought a genuine crowd of more than just parents and siblings; in his stiff dress suit, swept hair slicked back by his overbearingly doting mother, Jihoon was regarded as a child protégé for jumping tiers so quickly that he was a fifteen year old amongst third-year adolescents. It didn’t help that, at certain angles, he could’ve been mistaken for a primary school kid.

If Jihoon wants to find it (he doesn’t), his mother still has the video of them standing side by side on stage, not yet knowing one another’s names but gravitating closer nonetheless. Fourteen year old Kim Mingyu was cute before he was handsome. Lanky and demure and already taller than Jihoon. Another alleged child protégé that could hold his own with the older teenagers, admired for both his skill and his appearance. Admired by Jihoon.

There has to be close to one hundred videos on hundreds of phones or cameras that caught Mingyu talking to Jihoon after they bowed and were walking off stage to find their families. One hundred videos that filmed Mingyu’s mouth moving as he told Jihoon that he felt out of place, and Jihoon’s laughter and jolted nods of agreeance. One hundred videos that had snippets of Mingyu and Jihoon standing amongst hoards of guests and pianists, the search for their own parents long forgotten as they commiserated, regarded one another with nervous wonder and awe. Jihoon was fucked from the very beginning and had no idea.

Like most teens do when they’re discovering themselves and are curious of others, Jihoon and Mingyu moved too fast. Mingyu had recently graduated to the same tier Jihoon stood, and that meant going to the same piano academy and sharing the same teachers. Their first kiss happened in an empty practice room on the top floor. Jihoon’s first song about Mingyu bloomed that same evening.

Two milestones that shouldn’t have been, but often were, used as weapons, passed back and forth like a time bomb set to detonate.

Jihoon never had anybody else. Once he met Mingyu there was no fucking way there could’ve been anyone else. Right on the cusp of adulthood, Mingyu’s body draped over his and a hand cupping his chin, keeping his head up, Mingyu’d gasped, “ _Mine_ ,” with his mouth to Jihoon’s ear — and it was there, _right there_ , that Jihoon knew he was doomed. Jihoon hadn’t even been a second-year nor Mingyu a first-year when they gave one another their virginities. Thank god, that was one milestone not captured on film, but there was still proof. There was always proof. A series of photos, half of Jihoon lying in Mingyu’s childhood bed, wrapped in his navy sheets, hair like splotches of ink on a backdrop of the white pillow. The other half were a shirtless Mingyu mid-laugh, his hair mussed and face burning red from embarrassment; the scatter of red watercolor across his throat told the story without anything having to be said.

He had Mingyu the evening after their third recital together, and it was a mistake they kept like ammunition. Mingyu spent that morning crouched over the toilet, emptying his stomach of the breakfast their families had eaten an hour prior. “Nerves,” Mingyu explained as Jihoon stood at the threshold of the bathroom and his bedroom, brows knit with concern. It was a sore topic, one Jihoon knew better than to bring up, but his straying gaze angered Mingyu all the same; the hand that gripped the edge of the porcelain rim was promptly hidden between his legs, the raised red skin on Mingyu’s knuckles safely tucked away from Jihoon’s eyes. “Gimmie a minute.” Jihoon, privy to the routine they held, knew this was a demand and not a request.

The routine also mandated that Jihoon averted his eyes during celebratory dinner, pretended not to notice Mingyu get beckoned to a private conversation with his father, seen through the glass pane of the restaurant doors but voices muted. And Mingyu’s lips were often still, but Jihoon had seen them form the same phrase every time that he could now parse the words from this distance, first unsure, now certain — _I’m sorry, yes, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_. Even then, as a nearly fifteen year old boy with a rounded face and small frame, Jihoon should’ve known better. And maybe he did, maybe he understood that it was a wrong night, a wrong time, a wrong memory to carry into adulthood where he’d spit it out with spite, but his desires throttled any rationale. They concluded the night in Mingyu’s bedroom, their parents watching ballets with wine and distorted laughter downstairs, and it was that same day that Mingyu barfed his nerves into a toilet, hid his swollen eyes from the dinner table behind a palm and laughter, that he asked Jihoon to have him.

Jihoon had him. The home was lively enough to not have to mute their voices, but Mingyu folded his lithe body over his mattress, face shoved into bundled sheets, and hid his moans regardless. At this age they were smart enough to research how, yet naïve enough to abandon the prospect of condoms since they couldn’t purchase them secretly; the two boys maneuvered themselves with aloe vera from the master bathroom — and Jihoon fucked Mingyu from behind, Mingyu with his knees on the carpet and torso splayed over his bed. His bruised knuckles remained tucked under the sheets as if it made any difference.

It was a night Jihoon couldn’t pretend never happened, because it was there, sang from lips that weren’t his, a memory memorialized in a second song. 

〰️〰️

Life is stratified into before Mingyu and after Mingyu. Before Mingyu — Jihoon grew up in a home of musicians. His mother sang for the Daegu Opera and his father was a conductor for their Philharmonic Orchestra; when asked, Jihoon says his first instrument was the piano, but in actuality it was the recorder. He doesn’t consider it serious, just something he had to begin with in primary school to learn notes and fingering. His father always disagreed. “My first was the recorder, too,” he’d told Jihoon. “Then it was the clarinet.” It was no surprise that Jihoon’s second, too, was the clarinet. The clarinet in his school’s symphonic band, but the piano in their jazz one. Jihoon maintains that it’s the piano.

Music was his third parent, and it raised him well. Gave him purpose, dreams, introduced him to forever friends, sent him on summer camps and to evening academies. His high school was meant for the arts, and while his family wasn’t the wealthiest, his father and mother did their damndest to ensure he enrolled and graduated the same as all the other kids. Before Mingyu was a disjointed picture, made messy when After Mingyu took precedent inside Jihoon’s mind — but there were landmarks that Jihoon could never forget: Meeting and becoming enthralled with Lee Seokmin, the partly-deaf singer that never missed a note (they were soon separated when Seokmin signed to an entertainment company, reunited when Jihoon moved to Seoul); beginning piano lessons at an academy that conducted recitals annually, tier by tier; the pervasive thought that his worth depended solely on how talented he was, how hard he worked; ducking mirrors and averting eyes from his reflection in fear of what he’d find.

If he could’ve detached himself from the rest of his body, become floating arms and lips, Jihoon would’ve in a heartbeat. _Don’t look at me, look at what I can do_.

Before Mingyu — to be both heard and invisible.

After Mingyu — to be seen and heard and loved. When Mingyu first met his eyes, he wasn’t allowed to look away ever again. Not like he ever wanted to.

Jihoon accepted a job in music production after graduation; Mingyu had no choice but to follow.

〰️〰️

Jihoon’s trying for coherency, tongue useless and heavy with sleep, his limbs not yet feeling like his. The first thing he can translate into something tangible is the music — a Beethoven sonata — and how the staccato of the notes blear in contrast to his slurred arousal. Early mornings always feel like his gravity is off-kilter, proprioception a foreign concept, muscles filled with weights but fuzzy like cotton. He’s not sure of the exact time, but as he blinks the world into focus and re-acquaints himself with his bedroom, the pressure that sits deep in his chest tells him that this isn’t his normal waking hour.

They prefer the black-out curtains drawn unless extenuating circumstances require otherwise; slices of a young, morning sun sneak in between the cracks and splay across the mattress. It’s only then that Jihoon re-calibrates, understands that he’s lying on his side of the bed, and Mingyu is kneeled between his legs at the foot, one of Jihoon’s legs suspended in the air by a grip under his heel. Their mounted speakers are playing a piece from Jihoon’s classical playlist, one that’s lively and jarring to process when he’s only just woken up. And another jarring thing to process at the crack of daylight — Mingyu licking a flat stripe across the arch of his foot, saliva wet and sloppy, like a bitch with no house training.

Half-asleep or not, Jihoon’s never been into anything concerning his feet, nor is he convinced that Mingyu is. But the years have given Mingyu an odd sense of urgency, as if he can’t leave any stone unflipped, has to have every centimeter of Jihoon’s skin claimed only to say that he did and that there can never be more than one first. Shameless and debauched, not much different from a wild animal. Jihoon doesn’t realize he’s said that aloud until Mingyu sucks his first two toes into his mouth, creates eye contact and whimpers around them. The moist heat carries up Jihoon’s leg, between his thighs; if it weren’t already turning him on, he’d be pissed at being woken up by something other than his phone alarm.

“Filthy,” Jihoon’s sleep-gruff voice cuts into the light, rushed tones of music. Yet he makes no move to free his foot from Mingyu’s grip. Mingyu answers with another sloppy, languid lick from the heel, up the arch, ending at the ball of his foot; Jihoon’s leg involuntarily twitches, is held in place between two hands now instead of one. “You’re disgusting. Why am I up?”

Mingyu gives the arch two, careful tongue kisses before he breathes against the sensitive skin there, breath hot and stirring a deeper cut of arousal in Jihoon’s abdomen. “I wanted,” he pants, as if he really were kissed breathless, the way Jihoon knows he speaks when turned on. “Before my eight a.m. Wanted you.” Jihoon doesn’t respond, instead gets comfortable on his back, one arm raised and bent at the elbow to rest beneath his pillow. They’re so familiar with one another at this point that Mingyu understands this as consent, begins to press chaste kisses across the inside of Jihoon’s ankle, against the light scatter of hair on his shin.

Now he remembers. Their poorly-lit bedroom is a tidal wave, floor littered with discarded clothes — some clean, some worn — the takeout they shared and did not finish the night prior, half-empty Coke bottles and Jihoon’s collection of CDs safely tucked into their case. Jihoon’s wearing one of Mingyu’s sweatshirts he’d been delivered for free, legs bare save for his off-white boxers; below him, Mingyu’s hair is haphazard curls, mussed from sleep and late-night sex. Another day spent arguing was mended like duck tape on shattered china. Jihoon hasn’t forgotten to hold his grudge.

“You’re going to your 8 a.m.?”

Mingyu falters at the soft skin of Jihoon’s knee. Peering up at him through his wild, dark fringe, he answers, unsure, “Yeah?”

Jihoon pries his leg out of Mingyu’s hands, flops it down onto the bed with Mingyu still bracketed between them. “No.”

“No?”

“If I’m not allowed to go to the studio why do you get to go to class? If you leave I’m leaving, too.”

Mingyu’s got that look on his face that he pulls when the recital hall is loudly quiet with anticipation, and Mingyu’s sitting at the bench, curled fingers hovering over the keys and knuckles red and raw. The look that’s thick with dread, that means he’s preparing himself for something that always ends in more pain. Jihoon breathes in air in a sharp crescendo, and he can feel it, too. He’s sitting in the front row, the pianists on either side of him quivering with nerves, and he’s the only one in that crowd that understands why Mingyu frowns despite a perfect performance. The outcome is the same no matter what.

This isn’t dissimilar, here, where Mingyu argues, “I asked you not to go today because you work too much. If you leave I won’t see you for days,” and Jihoon retorts, “Doesn’t matter — if you go to class I’m going to the studio,” and Mingyu snatches him by the ankle and, cutting his nose to spite his face, bites out, “Then I’m not going. I won’t go. So stay.” So Jihoon stays.

There wasn’t a chance to shower yesterday; Jihoon’s still wet and filthy between his legs, makes it easy to scissor him open with a little extra lube. Then Mingyu’s flung his boxers off, rolls Jihoon onto his side and positions himself behind him, almost rehearsed. And the room is dark and warm, their sheets hanging halfway off the bed and the speakers playing another classic — a Tchaikovsky piece — while Jihoon’s eyes go unfocused, Mingyu’s persistent mouth and tongue on the damp nape of his neck. Legato. Seamless, connected, a note that overstays its welcome. Dried sweat blanketed with a fresh sheen, Jihoon is warm everywhere, but he burns ruthlessly where Mingyu spreads him open, a slow, slow, stroke that seems to last forever no matter how many times they’ve done this.

Jihoon’s thankful for Tchaikovsky to come when he does. Most sonatas are grating in their exuberance, a horrible choice for sleepy mornings and a worse for sex. But Tchaikovsky’s Six Pieces op. 51 is sorrow with sensuality, a duet of piano and violin singing like they mourn. Mingyu’s pants are scorching and heavy against the shell of his ear, that palm a furnace where they hold him at the waist, the other arm underneath and splayed across his clothed chest. Aborted little groans are punched out of Jihoon with each roll of Mingyu’s hips, and together they create a chorus of voice and instrument in their dark, messy room. Jihoon holds onto Mingyu’s crooked arm for purchase, grappling until his hand overlays the scarred skin pulled taut over Mingyu’s knuckles.

 _Grave_. A song made solemn and contemplative, Jihoon thinks, and it’s ironic then that he’s found, even in the dark, where Mingyu can’t hide.

〰️〰️

_mgjh_pp_2.mov_

It’s a shaky shot of the living room, a Schimmel grand piano occupied by two, teenaged boys in blouses and slacks. There are golden curtains behind them and velvet white couches partly in view, some adults sitting down and others meandering near the piano with wine flutes and their Sunday best.

“The boys are going to play a duet,” the person behind the camera says — one that’s easily recognizable as Jihoon’s mother. “Mingyu and Jihoonie.”

Once the chatter quiets down, the two raise curled fingers at once, wrists loose, and share a pause before they begin to play. A 3-movement sonata. Mozart’s K. 19d, something simple and easy to learn interspersed amongst the more difficult pieces meant for recitals. There are no errors, no misplaced tempo or missed count — nothing unusual for them. And when they finish the song, fingers still hovering over the keys for a beat before they gently place them into their laps, the audience coos and golf claps.

Then they’re standing up from the piano bench, side by side like misplaced cutlery, counting down with lopsided grins so that they bow in tandem. “Such talented boys,” someone out of shot but close to the camera says. His mother hums her enthusiastic agreement, laugh so pleased her smile can almost be heard instead of seen.

(If it weren’t for the video, this is a memory that would’ve been dumped somewhere in the regresses of Jihoon’s subconscious.)

_mg_phone_t.mov_

Mingyu’s filming himself while lying across his bed, head almost hanging off the edge. Occasionally the phone will shake and flashes of Jihoon’s leg where he sits beside him comes into shot. Guessing by the wide, guileless character to Mingyu’s eyes and fringe sweeping over his eyebrows, he can’t be older than sixteen. The glint of fifteen has long since passed, but there are still remnants of who he was when Jihoon met him on that stage one year prior.

Jihoon is reading something aloud, and Mingyu keeps biting back his smile after every line, watching his own expressions on screen. _Every road leads to a dead end, the maze of his conception. Bruised heart and bruised skin, but only one will fade_. It’s at this that he stops worrying his bottom lip, reddened mouth falling ajar. The camera catches him shift his head on the mattress so that the long, sharp line of his jaw is displayed when he looks up somewhere. At someone. “What’s that one mean?”

Dead air as no one speaks. Mingyu doesn’t stop staring off camera. Everything is so quiet and still that it’s as if the film stopped playing. Then Mingyu’s frustrated huff is picked up, and he turns his head to consider himself again, this time less enthused. “It’s not that taboo, ya know. Our generation is a little different, but—“

“It was wrong in his time and it’s wrong in ours.”

Mingyu blinks three times fast into the lens, lips flattening. “Whatever. Just. Don’t put that in, okay?”

There’s nothing else safe to capture, so Mingyu fumbles with his phone before the shot goes dark.

〰️〰️

They’d already begun blending together like the watercolor red splotches across a throat. Jihoon and Mingyu into JihoonandMingyu — and Mingyu’s pain was Jihoon’s much the same, throbbed like a phantom limb long since severed. As Jihoon learned about Mingyu he learned about himself; the nerves weren’t about the action of performance itself, but what came before and after. If it were up to Mingyu, he’d sit at the piano forever, on stage before a captive audience. It’s a three movement sonata: first, minuetto. Mr. Kim’s insecurities was a torch passed down to his only son, and the days leading up were spent circling that Schimmel as every note Mingyu pressed grated his nerves. Those nerves became Mingyu’s nerves, repeated over and over until they were Mingyu’s nerves alone. Nerves barfed into his toilet before every recital like clockwork.

Mr. Kim’s nerves to Mingyu’s nerves to Jihoon’s nerves. The decorative belt made to cinch in a woman’s waist was the perfect tool, thin leather that wouldn’t miss its mark when swung. Second movement: allegro. Tempo off, note misplaced, beat miscounted, and Mingyu presented his hands to be lashed. Red and raw and Mingyu’s pain that became Jihoon’s pain. Rondo: minuetto. Mingyu’s muted _I’m sorry, yes, I’m sorry_ transferred to Jihoon’s mouth as he watched him through the glass pane, tonguing the words like he were himself and Mingyu just the same. Like he were out there, head bowed and knuckles raw, apologies bilious vomit in a porcelain throne.

He saw his reflection in the empty space of Mingyu’s pupils. When Mingyu pulled him in and begged him to go harder, fuck quicker, those were Jihoon’s arms and Jihoon’s desperation. Mingyu carried his voice and Jihoon stole it with a kiss, gave it back and took again, over and over and over. _Mine_ , Jihoon returned against the shell of his ear — and that was their motif, wasn’t it? Mine. You’re mine, because I’m you. I’m yours, because you’re me.

By the time Jihoon realized that that was arguably one of their worst coping mechanisms, it was far, far too late. He couldn’t untangle himself even if he wanted to; he had no fucking idea where he began and Mingyu ended. His knuckles stung and his esophagus burned, scarred forever.

〰️〰️

You can’t live without me means I can’t live without you. Jihoon has a chorus of violins screeching in his ears when he tells Mingyu they’re breaking up and he’ll move into the studio until Mingyu’s gone. He’s said similar variations of the same sentence so many times that he could go on stage and perform it with his eyes closed if need be. What’s the most startling, though, is that this time there’s no applause after his mouth closes; what this means is that Mingyu doesn’t play his part of the audience, clapping when meant to clap. I can’t live without you is stated as, “You can’t live without me.”

He doesn’t say I can’t live without you. Jihoon’s at his desk, one hand still on the keys of the synthesizer, and Mingyu’s staring at Jihoon with a clenched jaw, eyes wet and resolute. “You can’t live without me,” he repeats, as if Jihoon hasn’t heard him loud and clear already.

The violins disperse to make way for Jihoon’s anger. “Fuck you,” he answers. And Mingyu watches him in unnerving silence as Jihoon grabs whatever he can find, stuffs it into a duffel bag and storms out of the bedroom.

Jihoon’s back home at three in the morning. Mingyu’s in their bed, eyes open and alert as if expecting him. He was expecting him. Jihoon dumps his bag by the door, swinging it shut with his foot and plunging the room into darkness and silence.

He’s still being watched with the aid of moonlight as he crosses the messy floor and tries to climb into the bed — tries, because Mingyu shoots an arm out and holds him back by the stomach. Jihoon blinks at him, disoriented with yet another change in their script. “Say it.” Mingyu’s voice is scratchy with sleep and it registers as a shout instead of a whisper. “Say it or leave.”

This is the climax, loud and final and unable to be retracted. _Stretto_. Jihoon’s heart is making a racket behind his ribcage, jagged breaths harsh enough to be heard. Building, building, an acceleration of tempo, then,

“I can’t live without you.”

Only then is he given permission. He’s crawling halfway over Mingyu when a palm holds him by the nape of his neck, fingers curling in, and he’s tugged into an open-mouthed kiss. Needy, seeking affirmation, mostly tongue and not much else. Jihoon’s breath is stolen and given back, panting as they share air, functioning as one pair of lungs instead of two. Jihoon loses strength in the arms holding him up and drops onto Mingyu’s larger, terrifyingly warm body; Mingyu shoves a leg between Jihoon’s, prying them apart to rut it against Jihoon’s groin and earn a gasp to swallow down. Then they’re just breathing into one another’s open mouths, heavy in their arousal, and Mingyu’s watching Jihoon watch him. “Yeah?” Mingyu says. Both of his hands grab Jihoon by the waist tight enough to hurt, holds him right there against his thigh.

Jihoon matches the rhythm in an instant, rolling his hips, working himself to full mast in his grey sweats. “Yeah,” he returns. “Yeah, can’t — _ah_ , _shit_ — can’t live without you. Can’t, can’t—“ He fists his hands into Mingyu’s hair, licks at his lips, asking to be granted entry. Mingyu humors him for a few seconds before he grabs ahold of Jihoon’s head from under his chin, gripping tight. Jihoon’s eyes flutter closed just in time for Mingyu to lick a fat stripe from the corner of his mouth, up his cheek, and over an eyelid. He repeats this twice more, Jihoon whimpering, barely registering what’s being done, too distracted by Mingyu grinding his thigh against his dick with fervor.

“Wanna fuck you,” Mingyu says. His breath is cold against the wet of Jihoon’s face where he’d licked him, and Jihoon shivers. “Lemme fuck you, Jihoonie, please.” He didn’t have to ask. He should fucking know better than to ask. He sits up to hurriedly strip himself of his shirt, then he’s rolling off of Mingyu to shove his sweatpants down, boxers with it. Mingyu is half a beat behind him, naked and fully hard and reaching for the lube they keep close, in the nightstand; it’s nearly empty after a week.

Sex talk is blurred between fantasy and reality. Mingyu sucks bruises into the white of Jihoon’s throat, across his collarbones, one elbow propping himself up while he fucks into Jihoon with two fingers pushed to the hilt. There’s no easing into it, no consoling kisses and gentle strokes; there’s only the primitive desire to claim, brand, drink in Jihoon’s gasps and whines as he repeats, “Yours, yours, won’t leave you, never,” and steal those words from his tongue, return them two-fold into a kiss, the bloom of pink and reds on pale skin.

And it begins like this, in a crash and not a fumble, where they blurt words that they soon use to hurt, Jihoon’s pain to Mingyu’s pain back into Jihoon. Mingyu has him on his back, legs draped over his shoulders and nearly bent in half, Jihoon’s body opening for him like it always has, a fact made redundant with Mingyu’s needy _mine, mine, can’t believe I’m the only one, can’t believe you’re my only_ , until Jihoon’s whining loud enough to bother their neighbors, fisting his dick at a relentless pace to his orgasm.

He doesn’t hear the screech of violins when his climax has him shaking and losing his grasp on reality; instead there’s a voice that reverberates in an empty recital hall. Mingyu’s voice transposed over his. There’s a multi-second lag before Jihoon realizes he’s talking aloud again, and Mingyu’s mouth hasn’t shut up, and they’re saying the same thing. I can’t live without you.

The next time, when Mingyu tries to leave, it becomes Jihoon’s turn.

〰️〰️

_mg_phone_sb.mov_

Mingyu at seventeen was a ballad on repeat. Unfiltered and inconsolable, blurting his every thought in hopes of reciprocation.

The camera was on Jihoon. A day spent in Jihoon’s bedroom — his parents out working late — because Mingyu couldn’t bare the thought of going back home to flitter around like a ghost. Jihoon’s sitting against the headboard, hair damp from a shower and eighteen and still a tad shy of being filmed even three years in. His night shirt was a dull white from use, and the neckline hung down where his collarbones curl in close. He was peeking into the lens through his overgrown fringe when he answered a quiet, “Of course not.”

“You promise?” Mingyu’s voice had fallen a few octaves over the past year.

“I won’t. I’m taking you with me. You don’t need to film me saying it; I’m not lying.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

Jihoon shoved his hair out of his eyes. He’s pale from lack of sun everywhere, lips like a smudge of pink on a canvas. “Why would I be? If I were you I would’ve quit a long time ago.”

The shot blurred as Mingyu shifted further onto the bed. He’s closer now, and Jihoon’s gaze kept oscillating between the phone and past it, at Mingyu. “Do you feel the same, though? As me?”

“Mingyu.” It’s an incredulous tone. “Who else do I have?”

“ _Your_ parents.”

“My parents are my parents,” Jihoon explained away. He stared daringly into the camera. “You’re the only one.” When Mingyu didn’t respond, Jihoon looked at him next. “Really. No one cares like you do. I love you.”

Jihoon’s eyes remained fixated past the camera. Unblinking. As the seconds passed them by, nothing being said, Jihoon’s softened expression gave way to something firm. He slid the notebook he had propped on his knees onto the bed beside him, then slowly stretched out his legs to lie them flat on the mattress. The speakers pick up his heavy exhale. A sound of resignation. “It stays on your phone,” he whispered. “Okay?”

There wasn’t a verbal response, but Jihoon seemed to receive a look of affirmation; he tugged his night shirt up and over his head from the hem, chucked it out of shot.

〰️〰️

Jihoon’s debating between kimchi or black bean-flavored ramen, it’s too late and cold to be alive, and Seokmin is standing by the iced coffees looking at him when the song comes on. Aside from them, the only other person in the convenience store is the teenage cashier that’s sitting on a stool, face in her phone. They’re Jihoon’s words over a beat that isn’t his, sung by an artist that he’s never met.

A song Jihoon began composing the moment he had Mingyu on his knees, lying halfway on his mattress, _Waltz of the Snowflakes_ echoing up the stairs and down the hall as if heard in a dream. Seokmin had yet to leave for Seoul then, sorted out what’d been building between them by the bruises fifteen year old Jihoon was shit at hiding. Today, Jihoon averts his gaze and makes a show of debating between the two flavors in his hands.

Seokmin shouldn’t, but he does anyway. “This is one of my favorites from you,” he says. “Incredible prose.” His words are genuine, but it still rings as disingenuous to Jihoon’s ears. The end of his sentence is heavy with more than either of them want to bother with at two a.m.

Jihoon decides on kimchi. He returns the reject to its place on the shelf. “You should’ve been the one to sing it,” he answers coolly. While he’s free to roam the city without anything to shield his face, he tugs his black face mask up to just under his eyes in solidarity with Seokmin, the man that can’t go a day without being photographed or bombarded. “One day BH will let me.”

They walk back to Jihoon’s studio with their coffees and ramen. Jihoon’s got his black puffer jacket zipped to his chin, Seokmin in a tan trench coat that flaps around his knees with each step. Winter has bled further and further into March every year, and this March it’s near freezing despite spring being just around the corner. His fifth winter spent in Seoul, recording the demo for a new ballad, Seokmin lending his voice.

Turning onto the empty street that leads to the studio, Seokmin frees his mouth from the mask. Puffs of air escape between his lips, the tip of his nose red and wet. “You know I don’t mind having you around,” he says — and there it goes. A conversation that no time of day can prevent. “If you wanted to move in I’d be all for it. I’m just worried.”

Jihoon curls in on himself against a gust of angry wind. Trees dance above them, casting ominous shadows. “I’m a big boy,” he says.

“Yeah,” Seokmin says. “And so is Mingyu. This is controlling, Jihoon. You can’t do that and run away.”

 _He can’t leave me by myself and expect me to be okay with it_. “It’s hard to explain,” Jihoon answers.

“Hard to explain? What part of it is hard to explain?”

“If I can’t do it, he can’t, either.”

Seokmin slows to stare at him, but Jihoon doesn’t bother to slow his own stride. “Wait — you can’t spend a night with _friends_? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying it’s complicated.” He’s been there since the beginning, but there’s still so much context that Jihoon refuses to unravel. He already has old songs following him through the years, memories that he should’ve never released to the world. “Can we drop this, please? I’m exhausted and wanna get this done so I can go to bed.”

To be dropped and picked up again and again and again. Seokmin’s silence says that it’s shelved for another day, when Jihoon’s lonelier and weaker and desperate for somebody to listen and not lament.

In the studio, illuminated with purples and fluorescents from computer monitors, Jihoon sits in his chair with his legs folded and a thumb between his teeth. And Seokmin is on the other side, the recording booth, singing soulfully the lyrics Jihoon had scribbled onto napkins, loose sheets of paper, the palm of his hand. Each note is hit and held exactly how Jihoon imagined it, translated into something _real_ that only Seokmin can achieve. A ballad that Jihoon bled to life, ruined by the oscillation of his own disposition. Music History in Classics taught him this one, and Jihoon was painfully naïve then, having no idea that it’d all come full circle soon enough.

Schubert. When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow.

Jihoon turns his attention from Seokmin belting out his soul to the phone in his hand. Three missed calls, ten unread text messages. Face ID unlocks it without his say, and the screen tells him his previous text — _this is your fault. don’t call me anymore_ — and every response. _i’m sorry_ to _please pick up_ to _you promised you wouldn’t do this again_ to _why is this my fault_ to _you’re just like my dad to please come home_.

— And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.

There comes a time when looking into Mingyu’s face is looking into a mirror, and that boils Jihoon alive with rage. If he can’t recognize himself, he can’t recognize Mingyu. If he hates himself, it’s Mingyu he hates, too. Jihoon says, “You can’t leave me,” when he once, far into their past, had said _please don’t leave me_. And Mingyu says, “You’re the one that left,” when he once, far into their past, had said _I’d never do that to you_.

If Jihoon’s Mingyu, he doesn’t have to be Jihoon. That’s not true anymore.

Memories can’t be forgotten if they’re relived. Jihoon believed this a few years ago, twenty and deep in denial. Today, an hour before the crack of dawn and still awake with the help of iced coffee and adrenaline, Jihoon’s long accepted that this isn’t true. Reliving, ignoring, running — they’re all impossible. The song was written, the rights were sold, and even three years later it plays when he least expects it; stores, seedy bars he goes to to disappear, restaurants, coffee shops. Futile, taxing, useless. He can already hear the distant laughter, The Nutcracker, Mingyu’s muffled sounds of pleasure.

It can’t be escaped, so Jihoon makes it his own. New memories to overlay the initial, constantly until the original meaning is lost on him. This means Mingyu with his face in the bedding, knees on the carpet and bent over the mattress for Jihoon to fuck into with ease. “I had you first,” Jihoon grits out between his gasps, vice tight grip on Mingyu’s hips while Mingyu’s hole takes his cock well. The only cock Mingyu’d ever had and will ever have; Mingyu whimpers particularly loud to this, and Jihoon realizes that, again, his thoughts have slipped out. “Nobody else, right? The, _ah_ , the only one that gets to fuck you? Mingyu.”

He doesn’t move fast enough for Jihoon’s liking. Jihoon removes one grip on his waist to snatch him by his hair and force his face off of the mattress. Mingyu lets out a pained cry, one that melts into another moan once Jihoon buries his dick back in, right into his prostate. “You’re the one that begged me,” Jihoon continues, too impatient for Mingyu to find his words through his pleasure. He’s so tight around him, clenching down around Jihoon that has him edging closer to his orgasm way too early. Jihoon slows, ignores Mingyu’s disapproving whine. “You always beg to be fucked. Shameless.”

Mingyu’s not the only disgusting one here. The way he responds so prettily to insults sets Jihoon off like nothing else; and his cries for more, for Jihoon to split him open and take refuge in a place meant for him, just him, is the orchestra, every instrument. Jihoon chases it — reverberating _Waltz of the Snowflakes_ , joyful sounds of parents that made Mingyu’s pain Jihoon’s pain, Mingyu’s baritone, “Yeah, yeah- _ah_ , made for you, Hoonie, you _fuh_ -fuck me so _good_ ,” undulating with the quickening snap of Jihoon’s hips.

The closer to their climax the sloppier and more desperate they become. Mingyu’s moans are turning guttural, a step shy of animalistic, quivering around Jihoon and practically sucking him in; and Jihoon’s losing his tempo, fast then slow then somewhere in between. _Rubato_. Emotion that champions structure, rules. Jihoon’d heard Mingyu play it once, at the phase of seventeen where the light had been snuffed completely behind his eyes. Fitting, then, for Mingyu’s final recital to be his rendition of Chopin’s Etude. Op. 10 No. 6. Sorrow that can be felt as a fire that burns from the inside out. Every pianist has their own interpretation of what _rubato_ means to them; Mingyu’s were gentle strokes of discourse, the image of a living room, a Schimmel, his father and hands that burnt red and raw.

In bed, it’s breaths that sound like they’ve been forced out of his lungs, grunts, _yours yours only want your cock_ like a broken record, and a face flushed and stained with tears. Jihoon gives Mingyu’s mop of dark hair another tug, bending his neck in a position that can’t possibly be comfortable, and there it is — Mingyu shatters, wracked with sobs as he comes untouched and pretty and Jihoon’s. He clenches and loosens rapidly, painting the part of their sheets that drape in streaks of white; Jihoon’s body doesn’t feel his own when forces his dick in to the hilt, also coming where only he has been, now until death.

〰️〰️

_mg_phone_b55.mov_

“Jihoonie, _fuck_.” A shot of Jihoon crouched between his legs, lips wrapped around Mingyu’s cockhead with his knees on the floor and Mingyu sitting on the edge of their bed. “Got so good at this.” Jihoon’s response was to sink further onto the thick length of Mingyu’s dick, thick globs of saliva from the back of his throat squelching obscenely in the corners of his mouth. Jihoon at twenty one was running a race that could never be completed; there were always new obstacles, mountains and valleys to cross. Mingyu had a six-year head start. “Look in the camera.”

Jihoon blinked away the tears that slipped from his eyes and did as told — just before a hand grabbed a fistful of hair from the crown of his head, shoved him even deeper, making Jihoon gag and sputter once his throat’d been breached. He barely had time to recover; Mingyu gasped, “That’s—that’s good, _good_ , your tiny mouth taking me so well,” as he gave shallow thrusts into the tight heat of Jihoon’s mouth. And like that, camera shaking in time with Mingyu’s pivoting hips, Jihoon was used as a sentient flesh light, sputtering, retching, inhaling sharply through his nose when given the chance.

At the first touch of teeth Mingyu tugged Jihoon off of his filthy cock. “You do that again I’ll slap you,” Mingyu warned, voice hoarse as if it were his mouth being ravished. The best Jihoon could do was let out a weak groan, eyes screwed shut in the pain that shot through his scalp, only to retch once more when Mingyu unceremoniously shoved his dick back into him. “Eyes open and on the camera. Ji—shit, I can see me in your _throat_. Look up.” Jihoon couldn’t see anything through the rush of tears, but he approximated the direction of Mingyu’s phone and pried his eyes open to look there. He’d already been told that he wasn’t allowed to touch with anything but his tongue, lips, mouth, so he opted to fist himself inside his sweatpants, his other hand clenching and unclenching on his thigh.

The passage of time was always lost on Jihoon when they fucked. Minutes could’ve been hours could’ve been seconds; either way, he was sore all the same, and before he knew it Mingyu was losing rhythm, groaning loud over the lewd sounds of Jihoon’s throat being fucked open. Once, twice, then Mingyu forced his big, hard cock in to the hilt, grip making Jihoon take him whether he wanted to or not. Jihoon swallowed the hot spurts of come less he drown in it. _Like that, like that, fuck yes_ , Jihoon heard as if it were shouted from a distance, echoing up stairs, down a hall. And he could feel Mingyu throb in his esophagus, spunk paint the place only Mingyu had ever been, his own muscles spasming around his dick.

(This video exists in two places — Jihoon’s storage and Mingyu’s — extra fodder that hung over their heads when Mingyu would go on to break Jihoon’s synthesizer, then buy him a new one two days later.)

〰️〰️

Jeon Wonwoo’s registered as _the man that tried to take Mingyu away from me_ before any other title comes to mind. A friend from university, the same university Mingyu almost dropped out of after Jihoon convinced him it was ripping them apart. Needless to say, Wonwoo’s not too keen on Jihoon, and the feeling is mutual. The same goes for Boo Seungkwan, another friend from university that Jihoon got into a screaming match with once when he tried to come retrieve a change of clothes for Mingyu; Jihoon forgets how many fights in they’d been before Seungkwan got fed up.

And he also knows their confirmation bias will kick in if he ever demands Mingyu break ties with them, so Jihoon bites his tongue, swallows down the visceral anger that strikes him whenever Mingyu mentions or spends time with them alone. But while Jihoon was planning to head to the studio and finish up his ballad, Mingyu mentioned going to grab a drink with them at a bar, which meant that Jihoon refused to not be present in case they fill his ears with nonsense. A tipsy or drunk Mingyu is a very persuasive Mingyu.

Jihoon sits and sips from his glass of beer without speaking, a specter hidden in plain sight. The booth table is filled with Jihoon and Mingyu on one side, Seungkwan and Wonwoo on the other. Seungkwan stares at him like he’s the spirit that’s well overdue for a cleanse. “How’s songwriting going?” he asks, not kindly. It’s the first time Jihoon’s addressed in the hour they’ve been there. “Must be good, since you’re here and not — there.”

When Jihoon was a boy, his gift was a comfortable seat in a corner while he watched his father lead his orchestra through practice. At least, that was how those trips were framed; Jihoon as an adult now sees it for what it truly was: his father teaching him lessons that could only be learned via example. No one played until the baton floated up, then struck down. If there was one blip too early, no matter how innocuous, they had to stop and wait for his father to guide them once more. The stillness of the empty ballroom gave each musician a chance to collect themselves, to remember who they were and what they’d been prepared to do. Then — the baton swings, sways, and they’re beckoned home.

The Girl with Flaxen Hair, _en retenant_. Holding back. This is another performance that lives outside of a ballroom; Jihoon’s bedroom has no rules.

“It is, yeah,” Jihoon says. He has the rim of his glass pressed to his bottom lip. “Thanks to a friend it should be done by tomorrow night. I ‘dunno whose album it’s going on, though.”

Displeasure sticks to Seungkwan’s face even as he tries for a smile. “Great to hear, hyung. Can’t wait.”

Mingyu’s hands are like claws digging into Jihoon’s knee, the thin fabric of his joggers his sole buffer. “Hyung let me hear a sample,” Mingyu says. “Seokmin-ssi’s voice is _incredible_. I wish he could have it.”

“Same. Maybe his manager will take me seriously after the award show; I won’t stop trying until it works.”

Mingyu’s excitement makes up for the dull glint to Wonwoo and Seungkwan’s eyes. It isn’t like Jihoon needs their encouragement, anyway; they’re privy to Jihoon’s antics, knows that he isn’t here to mingle or make nice.

Wonwoo shoves his glasses up the bridge of his nose, shoulders curling into himself in a way that dwarfs him in comparison to Seungkwan. “Good luck with that,” he deadpans. _It smells like a corpse whenever you’re around_ , Jihoon hears.

 _If only you knew_ , Jihoon wants to say. _That the stench of death isn’t from one body, but two_.

It hasn’t gotten any easier to stare at his reflection. What he found at fifteen is what he finds at twenty four — small eyes paired to rounded cheeks, lips a smudge of pink on an empty canvas, teeth tiny and square. He’s built muscle in his arms and abdomen, yet nothing will ever offset how unpleasantly short he is. And his disgust has been confirmed every day of his life: teenaged Lee Jihoon, regarded as a child protégé. standing beside a towering Kim Mingyu, another alleged child protégé. It’s an easy guess as to which boy held the attention of the entire room. (Talent will never be enough.)

 _My earthly body has been a terrible disappointment to me_. Chopin. This is Jihoon’s final, coherent thought before he loses the ability to string together a sentence both in his mind and with his tongue.

Their walk home was tense. Jihoon had been trying hold his anger at bay the entire evening, anger that was objectively silly and pointless and something not to be taken out on Mingyu. His friends aren’t him, they don’t share the same sentiments as Mingyu otherwise he wouldn’t still be with Jihoon. All facts. And yet. The fear of losing Mingyu bent and twisted into a resentment of Mingyu keeping company with people that hate him, that want their relationship to fail; his rage stems from several branches, screaming violins that takes no precedent over the other. Instead they stack together, and their song is — Mingyu’s friends hate me, because they have to. They’re biased against me and have heard only Mingyu’s side. They hate me without understanding. Wonwoo and Seungkwan have seen Mingyu with a tear-streaked face a couple of times, sobbing over how _mean_ or _cruel_ I am, but they haven’t seen _my_ pain.

Who was there to console Jihoon when Mingyu demanded he stop working so often, then smashed his synthesizer in petty revenge? Who was there for Jihoon when he was wracked with guilt strong enough to shoot him dead? When Mingyu told him he was the only one he had left, everyone had abandoned him, and if Jihoon left he was abandoning him, too? Jihoon is also trapped in a cage, and Mingyu uses it against him. Has him beg and apologize and cry on their bed as Mingyu shivers over their toilet, a pungent smell of vomit that Jihoon can _taste_.

Where is refuge when Jihoon sees Mingyu in the mirror, hears him as he speaks, dreams him every fucking night and wakes up tangled in those endless limbs? Jihoon never had the opportunity to discover who he was before Mingyu; then, teenaged love-drunk idiots, they exchanged their insecurities like trading cards, and Jihoon’s pain to Mingyu’s pain to _our_ pain.

“You chose them over me,” Jihoon says without his own consent. He doesn’t feel like himself. (Has he ever?)

Mingyu flicks the light on and their bedroom fan starts to spin. He’s standing by the door, gorgeous and slipping from Jihoon’s fingers with each passing day. “They don’t know me,” Mingyu says. “You do.”

“They’ll make you break up with me. They’ve done it before and they’re gonna do it again.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Jihoon hasn’t grown past fifteen. He’s a petulant child fingering a recorder in poor technique. “Prove it,” he says, chin tipped up indignantly. “Prove I’m yours.”

This is how Jihoon ends up staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He can already feel his forearm shaping a hand-print bruise from the manner Mingyu dragged him across the bedroom. He loses his clothes in the rush, is shoved over the sink and opened up with too little lube and too much force; his cock fattens between his legs anyway.

Jihoon swears he’s lost hair and is set to lose more. Mingyu forces his head up so he can watch, watch his expression and Mingyu’s as he balances on the balls of his feet and takes Mingyu’s dick. Again, there should’ve been more lube fisted onto his length, so the drag is a tad dry and closer to painful than pleasurable. Jihoon cries out and holds the sink ledge with a white-knuckled grip, lets out a sob when Mingyu doesn’t wait for him to adjust to his fat cockhead forcing him open. Precome drips from the slit of his neglected prick.

Mingyu is in to the hilt, his pelvis pressed to Jihoon’s ass cheeks, when Jihoon remembers to breathe. He’s definitely going to bruise where Mingyu has a large palm holding him still. “Open your eyes,” Mingyu says. The acoustics of their bathroom amplifies the volume of his lust-deep voice. “You wanted me to prove it, so open your eyes.”

He opens his eyes. Once Mingyu starts to fuck him with fervor, his body jostling, a series of sobs being ripped from where he tries to trap them in his lungs, Jihoon’s head falls between his shoulders. Mingyu’s been inside of him countless times over the past decade, but the way he’s fucking him now, with abandon, feels like he’s creating a new space for his cock to fit; it’s painful and exhilarating — it’s so arousing Jihoon can’t see even with his eyes open. The white of the marble sink is ruined with shadows playing in his vision, his mind mush, rendering him sentient enough to cry and whimper and beg and not much else.

“Lift your head,” Mingyu says somewhere behind him. Maybe next to him. His command, the pornographic sounds of skin slapping skin, Jihoon’s pathetic wails and heavy panting echoes like they’re coming from all directions.

Jihoon doesn’t lift his head. His body is no different from a rag doll jostling. He loses his hold on the sink and nearly bashes his chin on the neck of the faucet before Mingyu snatches him by the throat. Jihoon’s afforded one last gasp, and then Mingyu’s pressing his fingers down, harder harder harder until Jihoon’s windpipe obliterates. Just like that, he cuts to silence.

Pain melts to a deeper, burning pleasure. He imagines being detached from the neck up, his head light and floating away; below, he has to take what Mingyu gives him. Nowhere for him to run.

Jihoon convulses as he comes. Mingyu is everywhere.

〰️〰️

_mg_phone_c21.mov_

Only a speckled, white ceiling could be seen. The person holding the camera was sniffling repetitively, shifting around and turning everything into a haze. “He said—said there was no reason to talk to me anymore. Hoonie— I don’t. I don’t _get_ it,” his voice cracked with tears. There was a pause for him to collect himself, the room otherwise silent. “He hated when I played. He stopped coming to the— our recitals. Why am I still being punished? It, it hurts. Jihoon, please, I don’t know what to do. _Please_ ,” audible sobs, the shot another haze, and no more attempts to speak.

“We’re leaving.” Jihoon. Tone steady, collected, because if he was Mingyu and Mingyu was him, his strength would, too, be Mingyu’s. “To Seoul. You’re coming with me. Fuck him.”

The sobs unfurled into desperation, like the air in his lungs had been replaced with blood and it was going to kill him. The video continued with just that for an uncomfortably long amount of time — mournful cries, a child suffering his father’s death — and Jihoon understood this routine by then. Wet, bloodied lungs meant Mingyu’s nerves (that were Jihoon’s nerves); the camera spun and plopped down onto something soft. Sounds of rushed patter of feet, a door swinging on its hinges, and then a painful retch before vomit met the pool of toilet water.

(Barfs when overwhelmed mutated into bouts of diarrhea, the occasional rage too similar to his father for Jihoon to bare.)

〰️〰️

He can’t hide from Seokmin. It’s a fruitless endeavor. Three a.m., a studio casted in purple, and a ballad that should’ve been finished hours ago. Seokmin’s taken precious time out of his hectic schedule to do Jihoon a favor, and he’s wasting it in his stupor. _They’re_ wasting it.

“I can’t anymore,” Seokmin says. He’s got the collar of Jihoon’s sweatshirt tugged away, gaze locked in on the purpling handprint on Jihoon’s throat. The purple of the studio certainly isn’t helping its presentation. “You have to end this.”

Jihoon doesn’t bother snatching his sweatshirt back. Seokmin’s seen the extent of the bruise already. “This was consensual,” he tries. “I— like it.” Not a lie, but Seokmin doesn’t give a shit about that. His concerns lie on what happened before and after, not during. (The answer is never good.)

Seokmin releases him, and Jihoon slumps in his office chair. “I don’t care. You two should’ve broken up a long time ago. Back in _high school._ ”

Jihoon shoves his thumbnail into mouth to escape arguing. Something that never works on Seokmin, but it’s worth a try.

“Jihoonie,” he continues. “I mean this with love. As much love as you deserve.” A troubled breath seems to leave him involuntarily. “You don’t need a boyfriend. You need therapy.”

Brave choice. The last (and final) time Seokmin told him to talk to a therapist Jihoon shouted things he didn’t mean — _no,_ you _need therapy, you hate yourself and you don’t eat and you’re miserable, too_ — before he went no contact a week. Seokmin’s tries for reconciliation brought them together again.

Jihoon doesn’t have the fight in him tonight. But it doesn’t stop his passive-aggressive, “Thanks for figuring that out for me.”

“You can’t fix him.” Seokmin is undeterred. “He has to want to get better. You, too.”

 _If he gets better he’ll leave me. If I get better I may leave him_. So fucked up and, at least inside his own head, feels right.

“How long do you plan to do this? Argue and run over and over?”

 _D.C. al fine_.

“There’s a guy,” Seokmin says. “A therapist. He’s amazing at what he does… I’m begging you to at least have one session with him. _One_.” He doesn’t wait for Jihoon to accept or decline before he’s sifting through his parcel bag. He retrieves a business card and presents it to Jihoon. “Try to be honest. Please. I can’t watch you cycle like this for another ten years. _Ten_ , Jihoonie. Does that not startle you?”

Another fucked up idea that remains safe unsaid — it doesn’t. Jihoon takes the card from Seokmin and humors him by reading. Dr. Choi Seungcheol. Address and number written below.

“Can you do this for me? As a favor? I help with your demos and you go to _one_ session. Deal?”

A visceral part of Jihoon wants to do this for Seokmin. Seokmin, his longest standing friend that smells like tulips and blinds like the sun. So giving and pure and selfless. He should go. He hasn’t lost all rationale; he _needs_ to go. The truth terrorizes and seeps through at night, in his dreams where it can’t be filtered. And once there, he doesn’t flinch away from screeching violins that play as if to warn for anger. No — there’s silence.

What he dreads the most is quiet leaving room for clarity. Because if the music stops he can’t hide his chaos in the whistle of flutes, trombones blaring, drums that take hearts captive. When the baton swings, he’s no longer left vulnerable. When Mingyu played on that stage — before he quit and carried the scars as proof that he’d, once, been regarded as pianist with so much promise — he was safe. Before and after told a different story; minuetto and its rendition. Jihoon’s dreams bleed to nightmares bleed to a therapist’s office, baring his soul and having to discover who he is without attaching his worth to somebody else.

This startles him the most.

“I’ll go,” Jihoon says. And he means that. He wants to go. One session, tackling one dream that won’t leave him be.

Seokmin breaks into a smile of relief. Jihoon’s genuity is not lost on him. “Thank you, Jihoonie. Thank you so much.” Ever a crybaby, his eyes well with tears. He wipes them away with the sleeve of his sweater. “I promise it’ll be worth it. Therapy’s saved me.”

Jihoon pockets the business card. He wants to go. Wants, _needs_ — but he can’t.

He’s going to return to that messy, one bedroom apartment, and Mingyu will be there waiting for him. And it won’t take very long at all for him to find it in his pockets when Jihoon goes to take a shower. And, again, they’ll follow routine, note by note.

So Jihoon takes the card home.

〰️〰️

_The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams_ ** _._** — Debussy

**Author's Note:**

> alice? writing about the piano & classical music without associating it with pain? it's less likely than you think 
> 
> [my CC if you wanna chat!](https://curiouscat.me/disiIIusioned)


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